Subhas Chandra Bose, an Indian leader who fought against British rule, is widely acknowledged as one of the most important historical threads between Southeast Asia and India in the first half of the 20th century.

But he’s also a divisive figure, loved by many for leading an army which hastened Britain’s withdrawal from India but condemned by others for turning to Imperial Japan, one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century, to achieve that end.

Mr. Bose, a former president of India’s Congress party, escaped the British in Calcutta during World War Two, briefly met Adolf Hitler in Germany, before a long submarine ride took him to Japanese-occupied Singapore.

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There he raised an army, which fought – and lost – against the British Indian forces in the northeast of India. He later died in mysterious circumstances in Taiwan, but his military invasion of British India was credited with sparking a rebellion in the British Royal Indian Navy, one of the triggers that made the British realize their days ruling India were over.

Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of Mr. Bose’s proclamation forming a Provisional Government of Free India at Singapore’s packed Cathay cinema hall in 1943.

On Tuesday, a handful of octogenarian veterans from Mr. Bose’s Indian National Army, or Azad Hind Fauj, gathered at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, mingling with former Singapore President S.R. Nathan, among others. The occasion: the Southeast Asia release of “A Gentleman’s Word,” a book on the legacy of “Netaji,” as Mr. Bose was fondly called.

“I remember Netaji coming to witness our passing-out parade at the military school,” Girish Kothari, commissioned as a second lieutenant in the INA in September 1944, told Southeast Asia Real Time.

Mr. Kothari, who will be 90 next year, studied at the Officer Training School in Batu Pahat, now a district in Malaysia’s Johor province, and was posted as a liaison officer at the headquarters of the INA’s 2nd Infantry Brigade in Sungai Siput, in Perak.

“We used to survive on frugal meals of soybeans and ubi, just wanting to see free India,” Mr. Kothari said.

It was at Padang, the grassy field near Singapore’s City Hall, that Mr. Bose motivated Indians to join the military quest for their country’s independence. His call, “Chalo Delhi” (march to Delhi), gave meaning to the unfulfilled imaginations of Indians in colonial Singapore and Malaya, institute Director K. Kesavapan said.

One teenager in the audience when Mr. Bose addressed the INA troops at Padang in July 1943 was Bala A. Chandran.

“Netaji’s speech stirred the anti-colonial feelings in me but being in mid-teens, I wasn’t eligible to join the army,” Mr. Chandran told Southeast Asia Real Time. He instead joined the INA Boys’ Brigade and was being trained at Azad School in Singapore’s Gilstead Road to fight on the India-Myanmar border when the tide of World War II turned in 1945.

On the evening of Oct. 21, 1943, after announcing the formation of the provisional government, Mr Bose also formally inaugurated a Queen of Jhansi Regiment (or RJR) training camp in Singapore. RJR was the female wing of INA and named after a 19th-century queen of an Indian princely state who had also fought against British rule in 1857-58.

Another veteran at the book launch was Janaki Nahappan Devar, who rose to become the second-in-command at the RJR and later a founding member of the Malaysian Indian Congress.

“Stirred after hearing a speech by Netaji, Janaki had donated her jewelry for the cause of India’s struggle for independence,” said Nilanjana Sengupta, the institute scholar who wrote “A Gentleman’s Word.”

Ms. Devar, who now lives in Kuala Lumpur, not far from the Petronas Twin Towers, commanded a batch of RJR girls who moved from Singapore to Yangon in 1944. She vividly recalls a hazardous 26-day trek with Mr. Bose and many others as they retreated through rivers and forests of Myanmar and Thailand to reach Bangkok.

At the end of the journey, it was like being blessed with a new life, Ms. Devar is quoted as saying in the book, which also mentions her getting a signed photograph from Mr. Bose at their last meeting. That was in August 1945, just days before he disappeared and is believed to have died in a plane crash at the age of 48.

Ms. Sengupta says that apart from interviewing INA veterans, she also drew upon Mr. Bose’s own writings and the firsthand accounts of his companions, earlier recorded in a journal, Oracle, published by the Kolkata-based Netaji Research Bureau.

“Bose had a profound impact on the expatriate Indian community in Southeast Asia and several women and trade union struggles in the region can be traced to his legacy,” Ms. Sengupta told Southeast Asia Real Time.

She points to Rasammah Bhupalan: Inspired by a speech Mr. Bose delivered in Ipoh, she enlisted in RJR. Later she founded Malaysia’s Women Teachers’ Union, and as the organization’s president fought a long battle with the Malaysian bureaucracy to attain equal pay for both genders.

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in Mr. Bose’s legacy. Last year “His Majesty’s Opponent,” a book by his grandnephew Sugata Bose, a professor at Harvard University, was launched in Singapore by Mr. Nathan at a venue overlooking the Padang, site of Netaji’s 1943 speech.

In 2008, the institute published a book on the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, “Women Against the Raj,” by Joyce Chapman Lebra, a University of Colorado professor.

About Southeast Asia Real Time

Indonesia Real Time provides analysis and insight into the region, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. Contact the editors at SEAsia@wsj.com.

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